This ultimately shaded it for me. Two sequences that could easily be excised without loss, but the set-up for the horse chase is the tipping point. So Zorin basically had set up a live-size version of the old Mousetrap boardgame in his back yard???
That said, the horse chase does lead to “killing Tibbett was a mistake” which is the best emotional beat of AVTAK and the last time we see the under-appreciated “cold” Bond of Sir Rog’s era.
The stock car chase is one of the more creative sequences in the series. Sure, it could be cut. But I think that would be a shame.
There’s a lot to be said for simply being with the characters and letting an atmosphere (Switzerland at night is magical) simmer. Scenes like this make OHMSS the 2 hour 20 minute journey that it is.
Lazenby calling the scene “rush hour” is one of his better quips, and even if Tracy demonstrates her worthiness to be Mrs Bond, Bond himself is nonetheless in the passenger seat and relegated to advice rather than full control. That was a first for such an extended action sequence of this kind.
I also like how OHMSS takes the ‘goons get dispatched during the chase’ trope and makes it feel a bit more grounded. During the first ski chase one pursuer crashes into the trees and gets called an idiot. Bunt’s car withstands the rally for a time but it eventually, and understandably, becomes collateral damage in the crowded track.
Has to watch both sequences, and though I am viewing them out of context, the horse chase was the better sequence.
So goodbye Dame Diana–it was done with reluctance.
Could be. I had never heard/read. Will see if I can discover anything else.
6 June.
One of the below / Has to go / Make it so / Let us know.
Somefing loike dat.
Both are fun. But LALD did it first, and TWINE at that point only did it to parade Q‘s boat and to have Cigar Girl kill herself. Bond could have gotten his injury another way, and the whole PTS could have been shorter without it.
The boat chase of LALD is slower and goes on and on - yet it gives us Bond using a normal boat, outsmarting the others without gadgets. Hence, it stays.
Clinches it for me, that.
Bond always left a swath of destruction in his wake, and part of the fun of LALD – for me, anyway – was seeing what would happen when his bull-in-a-china-shop methods were applied in a “normal,” quiet community. The boat chase is the manifestation of that gag, with the overly confident small-town sheriff suddenly in way over his head and increasingly exasperated with his inability to apprehend – and ultimately to punish – the reckless scofflaw laying waste to his jurisdiction. Sure, WE know Bond is on the side of the angels, but what must he look like to the local constabulary, usually concerned with running in the town drunk, citing speeders or putting down Mrs Pearson’s rabid dog…and now suddenly confronted with Armageddon? One can love or hate JW Pepper, but for me, the point isn’t “look how ignorant Southern sheriffs are,” but “look what carnage Bond wreaks.” Folks who say Pepper is out of place in a Bond film miss the point that it’s the other way around; Bond and his exploits are too big and noisy for the Louisiana back country.
On the other hand, the same thing works against the TWINE boat chase for me. A rural county in 1973 Louisiana is a very different thing from 21st Century London; how is Bond’s high-profile destructive chase down the Thames and through the streets of the city not fully chronicled by security cameras, tourists and the media? How is he still a “secret” agent after this? Plus, the relative hilarity of Roger’s LALD chase is torpedoed (ha!) by Brosnan’s usual tendency to approach the ridiculous in deadly earnest. The chase is both too nonsensical to be taken seriously and too straight-faced to be funny. I sense we’re supposed to know it’s all done in fun based on Brosnan’s call-back to the tie-straightening gag from GE – this time performed underwater! – but all it does is make me wonder (1) why Q would be daft enough to make an open-topped submersible and (2) why submerging doesn’t therefore make it sink or at best slow it down to the point where Cigar Girl is certain to escape?
Anyway if you haven’t caught on yet, I’m voting to scuttle the Q boat.
Replacing John Barry must have been daunting, even for the reknown George Martin. Yet the LALD soundtrack fits seamlessly into a run of 5-6 soundtracks in a row that are my favorites of the series.
I think it’s about 3/4s of the way through the chase when there is an overhead shot of the two boats snaking at speed along the winding river when Martin’s music joins the chase, and then thumpingly underscores the explosive climax (the TWINE chase doesn’t really have a “big” finish - it just ends when Bond/stuntman make that impressive leap) - that elevates the boat chase to a level maybe beyond the sum of its 70s parts. Yes, I know Martin was already kind of repeating himself from the bus chase score, but the LALD theme is such a great musical cue I don’t care!
Plus the 3MPH signpost gag is very funny without Bond himself being funny.
I’m all things LALD and for that, rather than a referendum on TWINE, it’s the former that survives.
Yes, absolutely. Then again, I am daft enough to never have asked myself this question until now. Never questioning Q‘s wisdom, maybe.
But I agree with all your well made points.
I looked up the script online and though I can’t remember if the line is spoken in the film, Q calls it a “hydro boat.” One would assume that ALL boats are hydro-boats, but perhaps in this case the name means it’s purposely designed to take on water and/or work above or below the surface. Of course intent and actual physics are two different things, but that sums up the Brosnan era in a nutshell.
Why is Cigar Girl even there in the first place? The doctored money reacts to some bizarre lapel badge - apparently likewise doctored - that King wears. There’s no need for an operative to be even near SIS-hq. If it was simply to confirm the hit she’d have been better placed on a bench by the river and Bond could have stared out of the hole in Vauxhall Cross for a week without spotting her. In the speedboat in the middle of the river she was easily enough spotted.
And why ever is Bond drawing his gun there? Unless it’s the famous anti-helicopter PPK from SPECTRE he’s never going to hit her from his position in the carnage. Who does he intend to shoot with it while he’s running for the Q-branch workshop?
Anyway, while LIVE AND LET DIE’s boat chase goes on and on like a Mozart opera, it’s the more interesting sequence showing off Louisiana riverscape and giving, beyond all action and fun, a sense of locale. TWINE’s is one huge set piece perfectly orchestrated to the beats of 90s action cinema - but it’s also somewhat underwhelming for its aseptic formula approach. What a capable but unimaginative marketing agency might come up with to sell an expensive article of fashion that will be worn only once.
There goes the TWINE boat extravaganza.
It certainly takes a lot of criticism for being too long, but IMHO the TWINE PTS is also overly long and for me more annoyingly so. I’m able to relax and enjoy the LALD boat chase but as we near the 20 minute mark in TWINE, I’m just thinking, “So do we even GET a title sequence with this film?”
Is it nostalgia bias to think that Bond films got more ludicrous after EON 2.0?
Yes and no. I think they were always like that, but now we supposed to take them deadly serious.
Can’t get the staff.
I suspect that might be a euphemism for getting old.
Abnormal service shall be resumed tomorrow. I shall ask myself some very searching questions in the meantime.
Something about bar vs pie chart, one supposes. Doesn’t look as if that can be altered after the fact, sorry. 
I’ll take the LALD boat chase any day of the week. It’s a great action sequence. The TWINE boat chase is one of the most overrated action sequences in the entire franchise. The pre-titles for TWINE would have been much better served to have ended when Bond jumped out of the window of the banker’s office and landed safely on the street below.
7 June.
After yesterday’s anonymous pie chart “epic fail” (apparently an expression with the youthful-shaped, amongst which I do not count the eldest of my children as they are now older than when I started posting on this website) - you are invited to vicariously exercise my frustration at the brutality of mortality by taking it out on one of the below. One has to be smeared away, got rid of, binned off, disposed of in as inhumane a way as you wish. Vote ‘em out, keep ‘em out (a sensible manifesto slogan for any election).
